Low-Fantasy Occultist

Chapter 428

Nick moved away from the broken fountain, leaving his friends to organize their descent.

Adrenaline was still coursing through his veins, but he forced himself to focus on the immediate problem. The battle raging at the top of the Tower was creating enough magical pressure to distort the spatial elevators even now, which meant he had to find a physical route to the seventy-seventh floor.

He walked past the rows of sealed elevator doors and moved toward a heavy iron access hatch set into the far wall. It was intended for the Tower's maintenance crews, secured by a complex sequence of high-tier locking runes that would normally take a dedicated team of ward-breakers hours to unravel, and he certainly didn’t have that kind of expertise.

That was why Nick didn't bother using a counter-spell. Instead, he pressed the tip of the Shard of Human Ambition directly against the iron and allowed his mana to seep through.

There was a long moment during which he wondered if he’d actually have to try brute force before the genius loci recognized the signature of the one who had just purged its core of abyssal rot, and the interlocking runes shifted from a hostile crimson to a welcoming blue.

The heavy locking mechanisms inside the wall clicked in rapid succession, and the iron hatch opened smoothly.

With a huff of relief, he stepped into the dark, vertical space of the central maintenance shaft, using a gentle breeze to clear the swirling dust.

Looking up, the shaft seemed to extend endlessly into the darkness, lined with thick bundles of mana conduits that shimmered with energy to his metaphysical sight.

It was a truly fascinating space, one he would have loved to study in depth, but now was not the time, so he gathered the wind around him and cast [True Flight].

Propelling himself upward, Nick concentrated on speed rather than stealth. The shaft blurred past him in a rush of cold air and glowing conduits, and as he ascended, he extended [Empyrean Intuition] outward, letting his senses brush against the intermediate floors.

As expected, with the lockdown lifted and the corrupted demonic influence removed, the remaining faculty and senior apprentices had rallied.

As Nick flew past the fortieth floor, he sensed the unmistakable signature of Master Batters shifting the battlefield around himself, crushing a group of traitors between two collapsing stone corridors.

Higher up, near the fifty-fifth floor, a cascade of freezing water magic swept through the halls, instantly turning a pack of minor demons into brittle ice statues.

He’d been worried that things wouldn’t go smoothly, but it seemed that the loyalists were systematically cleaning house without trouble now that their magic was restored.

The overwhelming amount of structured, high-level magic thrumming through the middle floors demonstrated why the Tower of Alluria was regarded as one of the premier magical institutions in the kingdom.

Hone’s strike force relied entirely on the element of surprise and the overwhelming presence of the Greater Demon to keep it at bay. Without those advantages, they were being crushed by the fierce retaliation of some of the world's best mages.

But as Nick crossed the threshold of the upper floors, the atmosphere began to shift.

The Tower's mana flow began to falter, and the air inside the maintenance shaft became incredibly thick, enough to physically resist his flight.

By the time he reached the seventy-fourth floor, it felt like he was flying through a localized gravity well. His stats, which had made him feel utterly unstoppable in the public atrium just minutes earlier, suddenly seemed woefully inadequate, and he wondered, not for the first time, if he shouldn’t just leave it up to the Archmages.

No, I started this. I need to see it through. Hone is far too canny not to have a plan B in case his advantage gets taken away.

Even so, the pressure difference was staggering. Nick had to slow his climb, wrapping [Crest of the Thunderbird] tightly around himself just to withstand the crushing weight of the magic spilling down from the apex.

When he finally reached the maintenance catwalk on the seventy-seventh floor and touched down, the metal grating beneath his boots vibrated with a hum that he could feel in his teeth. The air was scorchingly hot, thick with the smell of blood, and he braced himself for whatever he was about to face.

Pushing the access hatch open just enough to slip through, Nick stepped out of the shaft and onto Tholm’s floor.

The luxurious space, which had once served as a private library, research rooms, and the formal office of one of the Tower’s highest-ranking masters, was now unrecognizable, reduced to a wasteland.

The interior walls had been ground into fine white dust. Ancient books and fragments of shattered mahogany furniture floated in mid-air, burning in slow motion due to localized time-space distortions.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

Nick crouched behind a load-bearing pillar he knew to be enchanted to the gills, keeping his aura fully suppressed as he tried to understand what he was feeling.

He immediately realized he couldn't enter the open room. The ambient backdraft from the spells being cast would quickly strip away his defensive magics, and even if he threw his strongest [Bolt of Wrath] into the chaos, it would just be absorbed by the sheer density of the crossfire.

Basically, he was relegated to the role of an observer, watching the true ceiling of power in Alluria. At least for now.

In the center of the ruined floor, Tholm and Bluetear stood together, facing Hone and a second, gray-robed mage Nick didn't recognize, though the power he was emitting was certainly high enough for him to be an Archmage.

Behind them, two more bodies were strewn on the ground, both bearing similar robes.

Despite the immense danger their presence posed, Nick couldn’t help but feel a spark of awe growing inside him. This is it. One day, I will be able to wield this power too, he thought as spells strong enough to obliterate a wyvern flashed by.

Hone was weaving overlapping matrices of destruction in front of him, orchestrating artillery-scale barrages of compressed plasma and raw energy that were well-structured, highly efficient, and utterly lethal. Despite how fast he was casting, each one was a work of art.

Next to him, the other treacherous Archmage was unleashing sweeping arcs of spatial severing, trying to cut through the defensive lines and open a path for Hone to target their opponents directly.

Yet, nothing they did seemed to work. Tholm kept pulling artifacts from his spatial storage, using what felt like priceless treasures as disposable, single-use spells.

As a barrage of Hone’s plasma spheres closed in, Tholm calmly drew a fist-sized sapphire from his coat and crushed it in his grip. The shattered gem instantly created a localized singularity, a pinpoint gravity well that swallowed the plasma whole before collapsing into nothingness.

Moments later, he brandished a slender wooden wand that burned out from the mana he was channeling. A spear of solid sunlight erupted from the broken wood, crossing the room instantly and forcing the traitor Archmage to blindly teleport to avoid being impaled, disintegrating one of the bodies whose robes Nick knew would have resisted any mortal magic.

His combat style was based on centuries of accumulated wealth and hoarded power, combined with a readiness to sacrifice items for immediate gain that no one else could match.

However, despite the immense power he held, it was Horatio Bluetear who truly ruled the battlefield.

Spellfire flashed past him, great dragons of flames and crackling plasma waves that should have burned through any barrier in a flash, while he stood with his hands resting casually on his staff, his expression one of profound, cold disappointment, as if this was all just a minor inconvenience.

When the traitor Archmage reappeared from his teleportation and unleashed another spatial rift, making Nick flinch back as reality cried out, Bluetear simply pointed a finger and altered its very magical composition. The distorted space suddenly shifted, transforming into a flurry of white flower petals that drifted harmlessly to the ground before burning to ash.

Hone snapped something out, slamming his staff down to summon a cage of hellfire around the two loyalist Archmages.

Once more, Bluetear simply stamped the heel of his boot against the floor. The white marble beneath Hone and his ally immediately lost its structural integrity, transforming into a pool of liquid gold, which surged upward like a tidal wave, extinguishing Hone’s fire and splashing over the traitor Archmage’s lower half.

Before the man could move, Bluetear reversed the transmogrification, causing the gold to harden instantly and anchor the traitor to the floor in an unbreakable cast.

Watching from his cover, Nick was completely awestruck in the most literal way. He was witnessing the ultimate display of magical power, something that even during the Age of Magic on Earth would have been considered too incredible to believe.

Hone and his ally were incredibly powerful and skilled enough to pose a genuine danger to any Archmage, but Bluetear's magic flowed with a liquid grace that made the War Mage's structured attacks look rigid and predictable, and for every attempt at breaking through with raw power, he had a counter.

Hone, too, seemed to recognize the disparity. He was a master tactician, and he knew he could not win a battle of attrition against the Tower Master, especially now that there was no Greater Demon to offer aid.

Changing his approach, Hone abandoned his targeted strikes and directed his staff downward at the floor and outward toward the remaining exterior pillars. He rapidly traced a sequence of explosive runes, channeling his massive mana reserves into what, to Nick, seemed like a suicidal gamble.

Nick realized he was trying to destroy the entire floor. If the foundation were shattered by such powerful magic, the Tower would collapse inward, dropping thousands of tons of enchanted stone onto the public floors and the city of Alluria below, while releasing the magics that had been contained so far.

A single one of these spells would be enough to devastate an entire quarter. Hell, that lance of light Tholm used could have destroyed any building except the castle and the temples.

Essentially, Hone was forcing Bluetear to choose between continuing the duel and shifting his focus to protect the Tower and the city below.

The explosive runes flared a moment later, moving too fast for Nick to try deciphering them or even think about countering their effect.

At the same time, Bluetear gently waved his own staff, releasing a pulse of mana through the air.

It seemed like an incongruous response, one that should have been overwhelmed by Hone’s flames, yet moments later, Nick sensed the genius loci manifest, and a ward of clear blue light snapped into existence, forming a box that completely enclosed the interior of the seventy-seventh floor.

It slipped between the stone and Hone's explosive runes in just a moment, and when Hone’s magic exploded, it had nowhere to go.

The explosions violently hit the blue wards, causing shockwaves to rebound through the room, but the Tower’s structure stayed intact.

The ward had taken on the full force of the destructive energy, trapping the combatants inside.

As the chaotic aftermath of the rebounding explosions unfolded, Tholm acted.

Taking advantage of the thick smoke and loud ether, he summoned a dark obsidian tuning fork and threw it against the ground, sending an unseen vibration through the floor.

It completely bypassed standard magical defenses, ignoring the shields and elemental barriers the traitor Archmage had hastily set up to defend against Hone’s magic, and hit the traitor directly in the chest.

The man’s aura flickered and vanished instantly, his eyes rolling back as his internal mana coils were completely shattered by the resonant frequency. He slumped forward, held upright only by the hardened gold encasing his legs, and joined his two other comrades who had already been killed.

All of a sudden, Elias Hone was alone.

He was still alive, despite breathing heavily and his robes being scorched by his own magic. He looked at his ally's lifeless body, then turned his gaze back to Tholm and Bluetear.

"It's over, Elias," Bluetear said, his voice echoing evenly across the ruined floor. "Your plot is foiled, your forces are routed, and you are sealed within this ward, with nowhere left to run. Surrender, and face the judgment of the High Council.”

Hone let out a low, humorless laugh as he wiped a streak of blood from his chin.

"You think I fought this hard just to negotiate for a better cell, Horatio?" Hone asked, his voice dripping with venom. "You think you can cage the fires of war in a glass box?”

Hone’s aura, which had been blazing with intense energy, suddenly shifted. It darkened, adopting a heavy quality that made the hair on the back of Nick's neck stand up. More tellingly, he abandoned his usual spellcasting stance and dropped his staff to the floor.

As dark mana swirled around him, Nick watched in horror as the traitor Archmages’ corpses twitched.